The Azerbaijani MFA will put the Russian orientalist Yevgeny Satanovsky on the “blacklist” for visiting Karabakh, Spokesperson for the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Hikmat Hajiyev stated Tuesday.

“The visit of the Russian orientalist Yevgeny Satanovsky to Nagorno-Karabakh was illegal. He will be added to the list of personae non gratae,” Hajiyev told Interfax-Azerbaijan.

Last week Yevgeny Satanovsky visited Nagorno-Karabakh.

The President of the Middle East Institute stated that he calmly perceived the intention of the Azerbaijani MFA to blacklist him, thinking that his contacts with the Azerbaijani colleagues will not suffer as a result.

“I treat Azerbaijan and its president well. Azerbaijan has its rules, and even if these rules seem quite odd to me, they still exist, this meaning that Baku has to carry them out,” Satanovsky told Interfax.   

He expressed an opinion that this situation will have no significant impact on his contacts with the Azerbaijani colleagues. “I have a great number of Azerbaijani friends and colleagues, and the MFA decision in this case will hardly block my communication with them,” he said.